The Browser is the Computer (Wasm I/O)

Wasm has blurred the lines between servers and clients, allowing you to run full-stack development environments completely inside your browser. Thirty plus years ago, when the web started, only text and images were supported. Over time, it evolved to support programming. First was JavaScript and Java Applets, later on ActiveX and Flash. Today, WebAssembly and browser APIs allow you to interact with audio/video, filesystems and GPUs, securely and efficiently.

This talk explains how you can leverage Wasm and the browser to build the dream programming environment. You can instantly run any combination of language runtimes, databases and servers that you can share with your friends and teammates without having to worry about running and maintaining cloud infrastructure. We will discuss the OSS projects, technology choices, tradeoffs and hacks involved to make this possible, including demos!

Transcript

1. r + The Browser is the Computer Daniel Lopez Angel De Miguel
2. About us
3. Washington Posh 1995/10/11 99c The network is the computer Thin clients, the new norm Dot-com is not a bubble Reputed economist confirms it Amazon rocks! Read the opinion of our Director The early days
4. The original thin client
5. r +
7. Where the World is going Laptop computers increasingly cheaper and powerful … and your phone, and your tablet! Browser APIs increasingly capable Improved filesystem access, WebGPU, networking WebAssembly continues to improve Garbage Collection, Memory64, JSPI, multi-threading, etc. Increased complexity of development environments Languages, tools, services, etc.
8. What is a server? Compute Networking Storage Ecosystem
9. Compute Browser-native Wasm apps and components Performance Compatibility Syscall Emulation Emscripten, WALI, and WebVM Hardware Emulation V86, QEMU-Wasm, etc. Wasm Syscalls Hardware
10. Networking External Communication Web Native Fetch WebSocket Proxy VPN tunneling Internal Communication Direct communication Web Streams Emulated TCP/IP stack
11. Storage FileSystem Access API Access user filesystem (read / write) FileSystem Access API Origin Private FileSystem A dedicated folder per origin OPFS In-Memory Persistence Browser Storage ZenFS EmscriptenFS
12. Ecosystem Meet people where they are
13. Putting everything together Compute Networking Storage Ecosystem Compute Networking Storage Ecosystem
14. Endor.dev ENDOR Demo time!
15. Use cases Isolated ephemeral environments you can use Don't be afraid to break things! Zero-installation environments Stop asking people to install software to run your project Learning Give your students an environment they can work with Development From cloning to contribution without installing a single package
16. What's next? More languages and services 64 bit support Persistence Designing and sharing complex environments
17. References https://github.com/copy/v86/ v86 https://emscripten.org/ Emscripten https://github.com/ktock/qemu-wasm/ QEMU-Wasm https://github.com/chipmk/tcpip.js tcpip.js https://webvm.io/ WebVM https://github.com/arjunr2/WALI/ WALI https://zenfs.dev/ ZenFS https://www.exaequos.com/ ExaequOS https://howfuguismybrowser.dev/ Project Fugu
18. Thank you! endor.dev @endorhq